How difficult is this game?

[Tharsonius]

don't believe the manual about giant PD
"province defense is the game's best..." (p.115)

[VedalkenBear]

Tharsonius: Actually, the rulebook is right, in a purely mathematical sense. Almost every PD cost-per-unit is ridiculously low. Let's use Arcoscephale (EA) as an example.

At 1 PD, you get a Myrmidon Champion, a Peltast, and 2x Cardaces. Using CBM gold costs (which is lower than vanilla costs, in this case), a Peltast and two Cardaces are worth 24g. Since you get this per point of PD, this is far more efficient than simply recruiting them.

Let's say you recruit 10 Peltasts and 20 Cardaces. For PD, that's 55g. 'Normal' recruitment would cost 240g. That means, should that province get attacked, you get a greater than 4:1 return on your investment.

Note: this also ignores upkeep on those units.

Now if you get twice that, in normal recruitment that's 480g, while PD now costs 190g. Not even 3:1 in that case. But overall it's still more efficient.

Please differentiate, though, between efficient and effective. I am not at all claiming that you'd want to do this, since many/most PD troops are not nearly worth their cost (even under CBM).

[Ironhawk]

Fenris99: If you want to pursue a turtle strategy against the AI, then the most important thing to do is control the bottleneck provinces. Instead of having a wide border with the AI, try to find the key provs which control access to large parts of your empire's interior. If you control the bottle neck provinces and put a ton of PD into them, the AI will brainlessly just keep ramming itself into them with no hope of victory. In this way you can gain almost perfect protection from the AI with the least investment.

Also, you probably dont want to build a fort in those provinces, just so you dont have to constantly remember to tell your commanders to Patrol (if they are set to Defend they will sit in the fort while the enemy takes the province around you).

[llamabeast]

Vedalken: I think Tharsonius meant giant PD in the sense of Jotun PD. The manual claims it's good, whereas actually it's one of the worst in the game.

[Fenris99]

Thanks, ironhawk.

I'll do some more experimenting tonight.

Any preferences on pretender types?

[VedalkenBear]

Ironically, a combat pretender would probably work best. Being able to take bottleneck provinces before your opponents is very important, and while your main armies mass in those provinces, your pretender can take independents on another front.

[llamabeast]

What nation are you playing?